Northwestern University

Using Figures Within Tables in LaTeX

By using LaTeX to author APA manuscripts, researchers can address many problems associated with formatting their results
into tables and figures. For example, ANOVA tables can be readily generated using the
xtable package in R, and graphs from
ggplot2 can be rendered within the manuscript using
Sweave (see Wikipedia). However, more complicated layouts can be difficult to
achieve.

In order to make test items or stimuli easier to understand, researchers occasionally organize examples in a table or
figure. Using the standard \table command in LaTeX, it’s possible to include figures in an individual table cell
without breaking the APA6.cls package. For example:

Center-Aligned Figures

However, the above code vertically aligned my images according to their bottom-edge, producing an awkward looking table.
Instead, we want the figures to be vertically centered. A Google search revealed the LaTeX
Wikibook, which suggests a few methods to force
figures to vertically align according to their center. Below, I surround each \includegraphics{} command with the
\parbox{} command, which centers it along 1 unit of measurement, set to 12 pts. in my apa6 class options.

By using \parbox, figures are now vertically aligned with text cells. However, with the addition of figures the table
is too long and we must span the table across 2-pages. To solve this, split the information across two tables. In this
case, I can split by the stimuli category.